VOL. 18 ISSUE NO. 32 | AUGUST 8 – 14, 2012

AUGUST 8, 2012

Congress must keep $62 billion of sequester savings

FAIRFAX, Va. – Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson recently issued the following statement urging both houses of Congress not to repeal the $62 billion of budget cuts scheduled to take effect in 2013:

"A year ago, the $2.1 trillion increase in the debt ceiling was accepted — the largest in American history — because of the promise of offsetting spending cuts. A supercommittee was formed to find the cuts, but if it failed, $62 billion of cuts were at least guaranteed for the 2013 fiscal year. That was what Congress agreed to, but now members claim they did not even know what they were voting on. Others claim the impact of a 1.6 percent overall cut to the federal budget will be devastating.

"What is devastating is the draining impact that the $15.8 trillion national debt, which will grow to $25 trillion by 2022, is having on the economy. The deeper we go into debt, the more capital is diverted away from the private sector and into the useless paper trade of U.S. treasuries.

"The only way to get a handle on that is to get on the path to balancing the budget, and that must include significant cuts to the budget. The fact is, since 2007, when the deficit was only $160 billion, spending has increased by over $1 trillion, and lo and behold, now we're running trillion dollar deficits every year. We need to cut at least a trillion, and Congress cannot even handle $62 billion of cuts for a single year?

"Any member who votes to break the sequester cuts without any offsetting cuts in return will be breaking faith with the American people, who have voted time and again for no more debt. Enough is enough. If the Republicans accept the Keynesian premise that spending must always grow for the economy to grow, they will have lost all credibility."